


The Art of Sitting on a Stool

by Jillypups



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: But here it is, F/M, and I'm sorry, art class, cersei brought wine in a flask, except sandor is so super naked so there is so super that, fluff?, i am an idiot, i am still very sorry, like so super G rated fluff, olenna is here, sandor is naked, sandor is well hung, sansan, so i already said art class, spoilers on that i guess, this is not my best work, this is so dumb, uhhh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-11
Updated: 2017-08-11
Packaged: 2018-12-14 00:20:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11771532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jillypups/pseuds/Jillypups
Summary: SO! about four hundred years ago there was a gif set of some sexy man posing all naked and long haired for an art class. Now, this man was famous but I have since forgotten his name, so I'm sorry for that. I am also sorry for the delay as well as the shitty writing, as WELL as this plea for your kindness. I just recently went through the worst bullshit ever, and this is literally the single piece of completed fiction that I have, well, completed. It feels off to me, but then, everything else has.LONG STORY SHORT TOO LATE, I just hope y'all enjoy it. Sorry I've been so MIA lately. I'm coming back though, y'all, stronger and fitter and blah blah ON TO THE FIC ALREADY(SANDOR IS NAKED THO FOR MOST OF IT SO WOOOO)picset





	The Art of Sitting on a Stool

**Author's Note:**

  * For [junojelli](https://archiveofourown.org/users/junojelli/gifts).



The lighting in here is absolute garbage, all dingy dive bar low that almost has its own smell to it, milky yellow from dusty lightbulbs, and it makes Sandor think of pickled eggs and pit-stains on white t-shirts just being in here, but it’s the closest bar to the construction site he’s working on for the next 18 months, so he supposes it will have to do. At any rate, he’s squinting at his buddy and coworker, blaming the shitty lighting for why his friend’s expression has turned so shifty.

“You gonna answer me, or make me guess at what you’re up to tomorrow?” Sandor says finally.

Bronn takes his time swigging down half of his beer before following up with a healthy sip from his shot of Jameson. He’s as covered in cement dust and dirt as Sandor is, is likely as bone weary as Sandor is as well, but for some reason he looks about ten times as miserable as Sandor feels. And Sandor is the scarred up motherfucker out of the two of them.

“Yeah, about that,” Bronn mutters, wiping the liquor from his mouth with the back of his hand.

Sandor groans, but then he laughs with a shake of his head, sweat-dried strands of his tied back hair grazing his temples. He’s heard plenty of woe betide me stories from Bronn about what he has to go through on his hard-earned weekends. One Saturday included not just a $40 brunch but a pedicure as well.

“Your woman taking you to some high priced farmer’s market? Or, oh fuck no, she taking you antiquing again? Is she going to let you bring _any_ of your own furniture when you two move in together? I mean, how many vintage desks does that woman need?”

“You’re not gonna believe me if I tell you.” A shake of the head and self-degrading chuckle.

“What, like five of them? How many jobs does that chick have to need five desks?” He laughs roughly, maybe a little too roughly, considering there’s a tiny, _tiny_ sliver of him that’s sort of jealous.

Sandor has a handful of meaningful pieces of furniture. A bed, a couch, a table. Two flat screens so he can idly watch American Ninja Warrior while he shovels takeout into his mouth in the living room, and then fall asleep to another episode in bed. It’s nice, having his own shit on his own terms, and he certainly feels the luck of the draw whenever Bronn bitches about Margaery taking him to foreign films, but still. Sunday nights keep on coming, and there’s a certain loneliness there. Laundry. Dinner for one. Go to sleep early and go to sleep alone.

 _At least I’m not waking up to go to a farmer’s market, though,_ he thinks as he takes a swig of his beer.

“No, I mean you won’t believe what I’m gonna be doing tomorrow,” Bronn says with a groan of his own, just before he downs the rest of his shot.

“So spill it. I haven’t seen you this bummed since your gramps got arrested.”

“Yeah, well, at least he got arrested with his clothes on,” Bronn mutters.

Sandor’s jaw drops open. Suddenly a girlfriend doesn’t sound so bad.

“I’ll tell you, but only if you’re a gambling man.” Bronn grins, murky like bad lighting, dirty like pickled eggs.

Sandor should know better, but hey. A Friday night is a Friday night. “You’re on.”

 

Birds chirp outside the wall of windows, a lovely mix of morning, all pale sunlight and the smell of coffee coming from the mocha latte that Margaery is wafting under Sansa’s nose. It’s hard though, sinking into those lovely sensations, when Sansa’s ass is on the line.

“Okay, but seriously, Margaery, you are _sure_ he’s going to come? This is the first modeling class the studio’s ever done, and if I get dinged for a no show by the model _I_ suggested, I’m totally going to get fired.”

Margaery widens her eyes, all gorgeous ingénue, and even though Sansa has seen this expression before (once before a _very_ drunk weekend in Reno; another time right after Margaery bought them self-defense lessons only because the instructor was soooo hot; countless other times that included but were not limited to fellatio classes, sunrise bootcamp, and skydiving, though thankfully not together), she can’t help but smile because at least the lighting _almost_ makes her best friend look innocent.

And that’s something she’s proud of. The lighting and the space and the overall feel in the studio are all of airiness and Sansa planned it that way, and it’s one of the reasons she got hired fresh off a graduation ceremony with a degree in Art History. The walls are painted a cool bone white, and they serve to both bounce the natural light streaming in through the wall of north-facing windows as well as to absorb it. They glow a little on their very own, adding their two cents to the various sources of soft, artificial light she has scattered throughout the studio.

And they’re all bouncing off Margaery’s face, which has transformed itself into a picture of dewy sweetness.

“Of _course_ Bronny is coming! He _knows_ how important this is, I made him pinky swear and _everything._ ”

“Bronn pinky swears and means it?” Sansa asks, incredulity dripping off of her as she folds her arms across her chest. “That guy? I mean, sure, maybe before a bank heist or something.”

“Hey! Bronny is _amazing,_ ” Margaery says, linking her arm in Sansa’s as she takes her for a little cruise around the studio like they’re ladies in _Pride and Prejudice._ “I mean, just the other day he went to the farmer’s market all by himself to get my kitchen knife sharpened. How sweet is that?”

“Sharpen them for what, backstabbing?” Sansa says dryly, leaning away from her friend to snatch an unwashed paintbrush off a tray.

“Oh, stop, he’s an angel. And hey, look! Or listen, I mean,” Margaery says when there are footsteps in the hallway outside the classroom. “Your students are arriving!”

“I’d rather the model arrive first,” Sansa half-snaps, but Margaery squeezes Sansa’s arm with her own, and because she’s so excited for the first class she’s arranged herself, Sansa squeezes back and grins.

They stop halfway around the room, standing in a forest of easels and lovely, fresh, untouched canvases that make Sansa’s fingers itch to touch them, but that itch melts into another sensation altogether when the door opens and an absolute wall of a man walks in.

 _Brute_.

That’s the first word that crosses Sansa’s mind when he walks in. Tall and hunkering, shoulders slouched, hair in his face, and the super distinct smell of one hungover man. Sunglasses and a beer-stained shirt with a splat of taco sauce on the right shoulder to boot, if the observant artist in Sansa is making the right deductions. She wrinkles her nose in disgust, and for the first time in her life, she sort of wishes Bronn were around.

Still, he’s big and tall and dark and dirty, some sort of creature out of _Where the Wild Things Are,_ and it makes Sansa wonder if there are more of him running around on some untamed island somewhere. Some naked, sexy, island. _Jesus, get a grip on yourself, he’s gross._

She clears her throat.

“Are you um, can I help you with anything?” Sansa knows the clients who signed up, and the only two men who paid for the class are regulars. This man, she knows instantly, is nowhere close to regular.

Head still down and unwashed hair still hanging, the man simply shrugs out of his jacket and says, “This is where the naked dudes come to get drawn, right?”

“Well I sure _hope_ it’s where naked dudes come,” Margaery says behind the hand she’s got loosely cupped over her mouth. “Oh, did I say that out loud?”

A giggle from the giggle girl, a weary sigh from the hungover guy, and one burning beet red blush out of Sansa.

“I um, no, wait, ignore her, she’s um, you’re um, like clothes off and stuff?” Sansa stammers, her words like a little train of cars that don’t seem to match up even though they’re barreling along the same track towards the one and only station in You Are An Idiot-ville, Population: Sansa.

Because there are a thousand reasons for her to be so tongue-tied stupid. Muscles and height, long hair that he’s tying up as she and her friend stare at him. But that’s not all, and that’s not the least of it. There are strange and ugly scars, too, there on his face, delicious delves and crannies, nooks and dives of skin that serve to make her both wince and want to look away at the same time they make her want to lick her lips and stare. Because while they’re scary as hell, by God, she could paint the hell out of him. If only she knew who in the hell he is, and that reminds her.

“This, isn’t, Bronn,” Sansa hisses as she whips her head to the side to stare at Margaery. “Who the hell _is_ this?”

Margaery glances at her best friend with a look of unmitigated joy, unwinds her arm from Sansa’s and clasps their hands together. She inhales, gazing skywards, before looking back to Sansa.

“I don’t know, but he’s _marvelous._ And like, isn’t that the whole point about art? Like look at all of that, for heaven’s sake.”

Sansa tips her head and sighs. Margaery laughs and clears her throat, unfastens her hand from Sansa’s before she Sunday strolls towards the guy.

“So, _you’re_ not my boyfriend Bronn,” she says once she’s composed herself and has taken the utmost liberty in giving this guy an elevator gaze that goes from head to toe and back again.

“No, thank Christ for that. He’s bitched enough about your farmer’s market trips to last me a lifetime of non-regret.”

Sansa has to turn around to hide her smile, has to cough to hide her laugh. Margaery does not spare her from the withering glares once Sansa has gotten her crap together enough to turn back around.

“Okay, fine,” Margaery says with a little harrumph and a lot of attitude as she folds her arms across her chest, cocks her hip out, and fastens that glare of hers onto the man who is _oh god oh god he’s unbuttoning his shirt,_ and now Sansa is forced to turn around again.

 _You got this, you got this, you got this,_ she says to herself over and over again, eyes squeezed shut like she’s never seen a naked man before. She’s seen plenty of them, and not all due to art classes. She knows the male form, truly. But there’s something about this rangy, mangy, mutt of a man with his big stupid pecs and his big stupid body that she’s not even going to get to paint because she has to run this stupid class, all of that chiseled shape and gnarled skin, the scowl and the growl. She could have a field day with this man. _Or a bedroom day,_ she thinks, surprising herself, and she’s juuuust about to giggle herself when—

“I’ll just see myself out,” Margaery murmurs in her ear, so close and conspiratorial it makes Sansa jump nearly out of her flats.

“What?” Sansa says over-loud just as she spins around to stare at a now shirtless stranger who is looking at her like she’s a mix between a lost puppy and the biggest idiot he’s ever laid eyes on.

“I’m just saying,” Margaery says loftily as she tosses her hair over her shoulder. “I have to see a man about a promise he was supposed to keep.”

“You’ll probably find him in his bathroom, barfing up all that fucking organic goat cheese or whatever it is you two shop for on weekends.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, buddy, keep taking off your clothes for the big bucks,” Margaery snaps as she passes him by on her way to the classroom door. “Sansa, sorry for the poor replacement of my sweet Bronny.”

“Thanks, hon,” Sansa says with an embarrassed sigh and a brief but tight squeeze to the bridge of her nose.

Sansa’s phone immediately buzzes in the pocket of her smock.

 **Margaery:** Just kidding! I totally love him! GET HIS NUMBER WE CAN DOUBLE DAAATE

Another Sansa blush and another Sansa stammer as the students start to stream in.

“Okay, so um, I was expecting Bronn to model, but I have to get your information to log into the system. What’s your name?” and she does her best to ask his eyes instead of his abs.

 

Once he’s told her his name she blushes out hers, Sansa, apparently, and he’s doing his hungover best to listen to her rules and guidelines and how to sit on a fucking stool with his junk on display, when all the students start wandering in. He’s not sure if he’s relieved or mortified when it becomes clear that nearly all the would-be artist bastards are women, but the scales start to tip in one direction when the comments start to flow.

“I’m going to need a bigger canvas,” says one blonde woman as she settles behind her easel and unabashedly pulls a flask out of her purse.

“Which way, honey,” a gritty grandma type says. “North and south, or east to west? I could set my Thanksgiving spread on that chest.”

“Oh my god,” the art teacher or whatever she’s called – Sansa¸ that’s it – mutters. And despite Sandor’s acute embarrassment and depthless yearning that he was still drunk, he cannot ignore the fact that this woman is gorgeous even when she’s damn near as humiliated as he is.

A lot of nasty thoughts poke their way into his headspace, the type of stuff you’d write on the bathroom wall if you’re the type of cunt who carries a sharpie wherever you go. Long neck long arms long legs long hair, all the ribboning length a woman could possess. A prim little package waiting to be undone and fucked right out of those schoolmarm shoes she’s in.

Thank the fucking devil that Bronn told him to jack off beforehand, or lese he’d be springing a boner so big you could hang the American flag off of it and make a pledge. Not that he’s bragging.

 _Well_ , he thinks as he drops trou before turning back around to face the class. _Maybe bragging a little._

“Well color me happy,” a red-haired woman says with a laugh as she drags her easel from the back of the class to the very front.

“Hey, Varys, do me a favor,” one of the guys in the middle of the group says, and Sandor busies himself as he sits on the stool and, well, _arranges_ himself in order to avoid eye contact.

One foot on the stool rung, one on the floor, legs cocked, arms draped loosely on his thighs, just like Sansa ordered, and suddenly he’s thinking about a pretty girl telling him what to do while naked, and he wonders if he’s going to need some private space to jerk off again.

“I’m a bit busy mixing my skin colors,” the bald guy named Varys says, “seeing as I’m going to need a _lot_ of it, but fine. What’s your favor?”

“Ask me if I’m still gay.”

“You’re as gay as the day is long, honey,” the grandma quips, and then she corrects herself. “Well, as _that_ thing is long,” and the entire room bursts out laughing.

No need to masturbate _now._ Sandor is more than mortified, and as he scans the room for some safe object to focus on for the next two horrifying hours, his gaze lands on Sansa.

 _I’m so sorry,_ she mouths, and her expression is such a lovely and irritating fuse of sympathy and embarrassment, such a cinnamon-and-cream concoction of worry and fear that for some strange reason, it makes him feel almost, almost comfortable.

“All right, assholes,” Sandor says with a long exhale that still tastes like last night’s beer and this morning’s breakfast burrito. “Do your worst.”

“To what, the canvas or to you?” the blonde woman says under her breath as she stares unabashedly at his dick before making a long stroke of paintbrush to canvas.

“Cersei, please!” Sansa says, all fluster and flail as she walks halfway across the room before she throws her hands in the air and walks away.

“If anyone should be begging me, it’s him. I’m totally going to Instagram this when I’m done, so he just better hope I do him justice.”

“So long as _I_ get to just _do_ him,” the apparently still-gay guy says.

“Which would explain why you never got around to doing my granddaughter,” the old lady says.

Suddenly, the class gets a lot more interesting, and for two hours, Sandor does his best to ignore the catcall comments – and reminds himself to never wolf whistle at a woman again considering how godawful cringe-worthy it all is – and instead just let the gossip and chitchat wash him over.

For one thing, he learns that Sansa is single – score one, he thinks, before realizing there’s no goddamn reason for a man like him to get hopeful over it – as well as learn that she’s the sweet best friend of Margaery’s that Bronn has mentioned from time to time. Renly is extremely gay, Cersei is extremely drunk, and Olenna is so extremely sharp-witted that he has decided he never wants to cross paths with her. He has also, much to his half-chagrined (and at one point half-chubbed) delight, come to realize that he is most definitely well hung.

Which basically makes up for being definitely hungover, even this late in the afternoon.

And then there’s _her._ Sansa stooping over to examine her students’ canvases, which is nice in a I-can-almost-see-down-her-shirt way but also nice in the way that it makes her constantly look at him to compare and contrast and critique and compliment. Every positive comment she has about the contours of him on canvas make him want to flex his muscles to get one of those comments personally. But he’s always tended to live vicariously, and this, he assumes, is no different. Still, it’s nice to be looked at by a bunch of women and, if he’s being honest, one flaming dude, because today no one has even once remarked on his scars, and he’ll be damned to admit it, but the last place he ever thought he’d find that kind of respite was sitting naked as a fucking bluejay, sitting on a stool in front of a bunch of people staring at him. In front of a Sansa staring at him, who at one point smiles, nods, and gives him a thumbs-up.

_I guess art has its place._

He’s not quite sure what to do with that kind of encouragement, since it’s so different from the rough and tumble feedback he gets on the job site, but in the end he figures he’ll do his best to return the sentiment. Sandor grimaces out a headachey smile that must look absolutely disgusting, considering it makes Sansa blanch and then burst into laughter.

“Aww, look, the big beast made Belle laugh,” Varys says, and then he sighs. “Now that I think about it, this portrait would look a lot better with a female model next to him.”

“Who better than our pretty teacher?” the red haired woman suggests from the far corner.

“Oh my god,” Sansa breathes out. “I- oh my god, oh my god, no, what, are you- wait, no, _no,_ I am the teacher, all right? You cannot possibly mean me.”

“I think she is,” Sandor says, trying his best to hold position, to not laugh, to not ask her for her number.

“Think who’s doing what now?” a woman asks just after the door opens.

He’s naked here, so even though he’s got a job to do that is staying completely still, he can’t help but turn his head to see what new person is going to see him in his birthday suit, and when he sees it’s Bronn’s woman, he doesn’t even bother suppressing a guttural groan. _This_ woman.

“Varys wants Sansa to pose naked with this guy,” the blonde woman Cersei says. “Although I don’t recall being asked if _I_ wanted to do it.”

“You’ll do anything for a dollar, honey, it doesn’t surprise me,” Olenna says as she leans back and regards her art.

“People, please, I am _not_ going to pose naked, all right?” Sansa is high blush, a condition she’s visited several times throughout the day, and while she’s gazing around collectively at her students, she can’t quite seem to stop glancing at Sandor, and what a wild thing that is, to him, this voluntary eye contact.

“Why?” he asks, shifting on the stool to better face her, position be damned. “Is it beneath you?”

“What if _you’re_ beneath _him_?” Renly asks. “Can I paint that?”

“Take a fucking number,” Cersei says.

“I’m kind of hoping he takes mine,” Olenna says crisply as she dabs at her canvas.

“Oh my _god,_ ” Sansa whimpers, turning away from them all, and they’re all of them laughing, even Sandor to certain extent because hey, he’s got a room full of people actually looking at him for the first time without reluctance, but then her shoulders shake, and now he’s frowning.

He doesn’t know this woman from Eve, doesn’t really give a shit about any of this crap except for not having to eat crow in front of Bronn if he doesn’t hold up his end of that stupid drunken bet last night. But she gave him that little _I’m sorry_ and all those sexy, pent-up little looks, and the deep down insecure animal inside him feels a kindred spirit, here.

Sandor stands up, turns around to snatch the robe that’s hanging on a hook behind his stool, dons it, and strides through the thicket of easels to where Sansa is standing, hands on her face and shoulders hunched up.

“Dead man walking,” Varys quips with another sigh. “My finest work will have to go unfinished.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Sandor barks with a glance over his shoulder, though once he’s glimpsed what most of the students have produced on their canvases, he turns back with a wide eyed determination to never set foot inside an art studio again.

“Honey, what’s wrong?” Margaery says as she sidles past Sandor to wrap an arm around Sansa, and just like that, Sandor’s chance to be a source of comfort instead of menace is robbed from him.

Still, he stands there, world’s biggest and ugliest (though apparently very well-endowed) moron as two girls confide in each other.

“I just, I feel so stupid,” Sansa whisper warble cries, turning into her best friend’s arms. “They’re making fun of me, and I wanted this class to go so well. I blew it.”

“Can I blow it?” Renly asks. More laughter.

“Hey, now,” Sandor says after a menacing glower around the room behind him, as he subconsciously cinches the terry cloth robe’s sash all the more tightly around his middle. He turns back to Sansa. “If they’re making fun of anyone, it’s me. Have you or have you not been here all goddamn day, listening to their nonstop heckling?”

A weepy laugh, the swipe of her hand against a tear-soaked cheek. Instead of paint, all Sandor can think of now is watercolor.

“Yeah, I’ve heard it,” Sansa says finally as she lifts her head from Margaery’s shoulder to look at him. “I’m so sorry, Sandor. Had I known they would heckle like that, I never would have- well, I mean, I thought it was Bronn who was going to show up, not- I mean, god, I figured the scars would have been the thing they’d freak out over, not your—oh, _oh_ my god, I’m so sorry,” she says with a horrified gasp and the fling of her hand over her mouth.

“Oh?” Sandor says with a step back and the folding of his arms over his chest. It’s what he thought too, but still, to have _this_ pretty young thing say it right to his goddamned marred face, well.

“ _Speaking_ of Bronn,” Margaery says, stepping in the middle of their three person huddle to scroll through her texts. “Apparently, that big jerk made a bed against Sandor, and that’s why he’s not here today.”

“Wait, there’s a bigger jerk than _that_ guy?” Olenna says, and Sandor glances back at her in time to see her whip out a checkbook from her oversized purse. “If he’s going to be here next week, I’m signing up.”

“You’re here on a bet?” Sansa says with a hiccupping sort of inhale and sigh as she gazes up at Sandor. At his eyes, not his face, not his- well, admittedly the lower parts of him are covered up now.

“Yeah,” he says gruffly with a suddenly modest shrug.

“That’s pretty bold, Sandor,” she says with a teary smile.

“Yeah, well, I was pretty drunk.”

“Sansa could probably stand to get a little drunk right now, I’m just saying,” Margaery adds, typing out a text before closing out of the messaging app and gazing between them with a bright smile. “Maybe, you know, we could do another bet, and if Sansa loses, then she has to pose.”

Sansa narrows her eyes, instantly wary of her best friend. Sandor can’t help but chuckle.

“What was the bet made over?” Sansa says, looking back and forth between Sandor and her best friend as she hugs herself with the arch of an eyebrow. It makes Sandor think of the curve of a waning moon. “Or on, or whatever.”

“Pool,” he says finally, wondering if he’s going to see her bend over a pool table, her long auburn hair brushing the green felt like fine fingers down the length of his back. “I lost two out of three games of pool.”

“Oh,” Sansa says, perking up somewhat as she clears her throat and lets her arms drop down to her sides, a considerable bloom of self-confidence cropping up where there had only been remorse, and there’s something about that that Sandor likes considerably. “Well, maybe I’ll consider. If Sandor loses, he has to pose again,” she says, something of the sly cat to her tone and her look and the way she aims that gaze at him.

“And if I _win,_ you have to pose solo,” Sandor instantly shoots back, because a dog is a dog, no matter the day, and if he gets a chance to sit behind an easel and pretend to paint only to stare at her naked, it will be the best day he’s ever goddamn had.

“I’m pretty good at pool,” she quips back, a nice little nip to her voice as she lets the slow slide of a smile onto her mouth.

“And if _I_ win, you both have to pose together,” Margaery says with a happy beam. “And just so you know, Sandor, while I drag Bronn to all those _horrible_ places on Saturdays, it’s only because he’s made me suffer for a year on Friday nights, teaching me trick shots.”

Sandor and Sansa stare at each other.

Finally—

“You game, little lady?”

A sniff and the straightening of shoulders. The squaring of her jaw and another little lift of her eyebrow. And then the sneakiest little devilish smile.

“Oh, I’m game. I just hope you’re ready to take off that robe again.”

“That’s my girl!” shouts Olenna.


End file.
